The cover of The Last Beginning is being revealed THIS TIME NEXT WEEK by some lovely Instagram bloggers and @tilly-and-her-books, @pollyandbooks and @prettybooks here on Tumblr.

If that isn’t enough, there’s also going to be a VERY EXCITING ANNOUNCEMENT by the folks over at @maximumpop alongside the cover!

Here’s a clue to what it’s about……do you have any guesses? I’ll be posting more clues between now and Friday – anyone who guesses correctly will be sent a signed bookmark!

#the last beginning #the next together #another together
13TH MAY 2016

Here’s clue number 2! Any guesses what my announcement is? No one has got it yet! 👐

14TH MAY 2016

Clue #3! No one has got it quite right yet…. 🙊 Any ideas? If you’re feeling confused, don’t worry – the clues will get more obvious as the week goes on. You might want to go back and reread TNT looking for hints… you can win a signed bookmark if you get it right! (Open INT)

#the next together #the last beginning #another together
15TH MAY 2016

Clue number 4! We’ve already have a winner – the lovely @rachel_starkidx messaged me privately guessing the announcement. Congratulations Rachel! Anyone else who guesses it right can still win a signed bookmark though – only 3 more clues left before Friday…..

#another together
16TH MAY 2016

Clue number 5! Yesterday we had another winner, the very well-named @_laurenrobbins! Congratulations Lauren, you worked really hard to work it out. There’s still a chance for the rest of you to win a signed bookmark though – two clues left! 🎉

#another together
17TH MAY 2016

Today’s clue! We had three winners yesterday – good work everyone! Only one clue left to go after this….

#another together
18TH MAY 2016

FINAL CLUE. This is your last day to win a signed bookmark by guessing my super exciting super secret announcement about The Next Together. It’s going to be revealed on Maximum Pop! at 8pm tomorrow, along with the (amazing!) cover of The Last Beginning. You’ve has 7 clues, and yesterday 4 people got it right, so I want to see you guys going wild with suggestions in the comment section down here. 👇👇👇👇👇👇 If you really have no ideas, here’s the answer in hangman. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Leave a letter in the comments and I’ll update it over the course of today and tomorrow. CATCH YOU TOMORROW WITH THE ANNOUNCEMENT AND COVER REVEAL!!! 🙆

#another together
19TH MAY 2016

The Last Beginning Cover reveal + Special Announcement
I promised you guys a special announcement today, alongside the new cover. I’ve been posting clues about it all week, and 8 of you correctly guess what it was (congratulations, you clever sleuths! You can officially call yourselves my biggest fans. (I mean, only if you want…..no pressure.))

Lots of people have asked me why Kate and Matt talked a lot about one of their other past lives in The Next Together, where they stopped a murder at Bletchley Park. That story isn’t part of the book, but lots of you (including my editor!) were absolutely desperate to know what happened. And I listened. So …..

I’m going to be releasing a short novella about Katherine and Matthew, set at Bletchley Park during World War II. It’s coming out on 2nd June on Kindle and all other eBook providers, and it’s going to be free.
For anyone who doesn’t know, Bletchley Park in England was the secret location of a code-breaking team during World War II. The mathematicians and scientists worked to break the code which the Germans used to send each other messages, and when they cracked it, they significantly helped the Allies to win the war. With the messages they decoded, the Allies learnt details of upcoming German tactics, and managed to work against them.

It was the topic of the 2014 film The Imitation Game, where Benedict Cumberbatch played Alan Turing, the scientist who cracked the Nazi’s Enigma code.

I had so much fun visiting Bletchley Park and researching this story, where Kate (known in this story as Kitty) and Matthew work at Station X at Bletchley.

Here’s the blurb:

Winter, 1940: there is a murderer on the loose at Bletchley Park, the headquarters of Britain’s most daring codebreaking operation against the Nazis. Can two young codebreakers Kitty and Matthew catch the killer?

This standalone short story can be enjoyed by new readers and existing fans of Lauren James’s The Next Together series.

Another Together_short story_ by Lauren James_publishing 2 June 2016
Again, Jack has completely overpassed my greatest expectations with this. It’s so stunning that I think I’m going to have to print out a real copy just so I can have it on paper to match the books.

And if you were wondering what the clues all meant, here’s your answer:

Clue 1 – A codebreaker’s desk at Bletchley Park, with a sneaky copy of TNT.
Clue 1 – A codebreaker’s desk at Bletchley Park, with a sneaky copy of TNT.

Clue 2 – A dispatch worker’s motorcycle which was used to take decoded Nazi messages back and forth from Bletchley to Winston Churchill and other military leaders in London.

Clue 3 – One of the huts at Bletchley Park

Clue 4 – The lake and mansion at Bletchley Park

Clue 5 – A machine used to decode messages written with the Enigma machine

You can add Another Together on Goodreads, and I will let you know when it’s available to preorder on Amazon and other eBook providers in the UK, Ireland and Australia / New Zealand. The eBook will also contain the first chapter of The Last Beginning, so hopefully this will tide you over until my second book is released (138 days!).

ENJOY, GUYS.

Finally, because I can’t stop staring at them together, here’s the whole, complete, series:

I WROTE A WHOLE SERIES, GUYS. A WHOLE S E R I E S. !!!!

#the last beginning #the next together #another together
20TH MAY 2016

A Winter Wonderland by Bletchley Park Trust

#another together #bletchley park
2ND JUN 2016

It’s past midnight which means…..IT’S TIME!!! Go download my World War II short story Another Together for free on Amazon (available around the world, as far as I can tell!). Link to Amazon UK: ENJOY.

#Another together
2ND JUN 2016

My free short story is at #335 in the Kindle store! Shall we see if we can get it into the top 100 by the end of today? Download it! TELL YOUR FRIENDS TO DOWNLOAD IT! Let’s do this thing!! 💖🔥💪😎🎉👌

#another together
2ND JUN 2016

Free e-novella ANOTHER TOGETHER released!
Happy Thursday! And happy Another Together publication day! This is a complete 10,000 word (50 page) short story, released on Kindle and eBook. It can be read without having read The Next Together – and it’s free, so you’ve got no excuse not to dive in! The prologue of The Last Beginning is also included at the end (You’ll get to meet Clove! Eek!).

A short story of intrigue and murder set in the world of The Next Together series. Winter, 1940: there is a murderer on the loose at Bletchley Park, the headquarters of Britain’s most daring codebreaking operation against the Nazis. Can two young codebreakers Kitty and Matthew catch the killer? This standalone short story can be enjoyed by new readers and existing fans of Lauren James’s The Next Together series.

You can download it here when you sign up for the publisher newsletter.

I can’t wait to see what you guys think! Look out over the next month for some more Behind the Scenes stuff too – including a blog post by the cover designer Jack, competitions to win signed copies and more!

And, if I can just have a moment of soppiness – I just want to talk a bit about what today means to me personally as an author. As of right now, June 2016, I have been a full time writer for exactly two years. I’ve written three novels and a novella in that time, done countless public speaking events and published my debut novel. It’s been a busy time.

I was lucky enough to get a book deal while I was at university, so I graduated aged 21 with a job – kind of. I still couldn’t believe being a writer was an option for me, so I called it a ‘gap year’ at first, to justify why I was taking the risk. Everything you read tells you that for a new author in the 21st century, it’s not possible to support yourself by writing. And it isn’t. Not at first.

I was in a very privileged position by having the family backing that let me take that gamble. (Mainly because my parents let me live at home. I could definitely NOT be an author without them. Thanks mum and dad!) But I made very little money that first year – far below minimum wage.

For a while, I thought that being an author wasn’t possible for me, at this time in my life. The finances just weren’t going to work out. Unless you’re a bestseller (which I am definitely not), I didn’t think it was possible to make enough money to live on by writing. I resigned myself to getting a job after my ‘gap year’ was over. But….somehow, it has worked out.

Last year I got an Arts Council grant which kept me going while my debut was published. (I owe Arts Council England a life debt. No joke.) This year, when I resigned myself once again to having to get a ‘real’ job, I got more funding just when I needed it (but more on that soon, hopefully!).

So as I enter my third year of writing full time, I am very, very grateful. Every year I still get to do this, I feel unbelievably lucky. It’s the best gift. I don’t know if I’ll be able to do this forever sustainably, or whether in a few years I’ll have to get another job and write in my spare time – which would be near impossible, seeing as I work way-more-than-full-time now, but I’d try and make it work.

But I do know that, for now, writing is the best and greatest gift I have ever been given. I’m paid to do what I love. I write things I’ve dreamt up in my head and people pay to read them. It’s impossibly wonderful and I still feel like I’ve tricked someone into giving me this life.

This eBook, written and released for free, is a present to say thank you for that, with all my heart. You, the people who support my writing by buying my books (and at the last count there’s something like 10,000 of you – that’s 37 people a day!), are the ones that make that happen.

And, just as a reminder – if you can’t afford to buy my books, please don’t pirate them. Please borrow them from a library instead.
It’s so painful to see links to download my book illegally, and it really does impact an author’s career. It’s free to use libraries, and in the UK authors get paid approximately the same amount if you borrow a book as if you buy it. Public Lending Rights are 7.7 pence per library loan, and royalties are usually around 10% per copy purchased – in paperback that’s 7.9 pence.

Finally, if you enjoy reading Another Together, the best way to thank an author, always, is to leave them a review. Good or bad, it doesn’t matter. It all helps. Thank you. ❤

My US publisher Sky Pony Press have put my short story ANOTHER TOGETHER, about Kate and Matt solving a murder at Bletchley Park, up online. If you’ve been waiting to read this you can now download it for free here!

Special edition of The Last Beginning!

Exciting news! Scholastic Book Clubs have commissioned a special edition of The Last Beginning, which includes the short story set at Bletchley Park ’Another Together ’ at the end. I’m so excited that this e-book exclusive short story is finally in print! It’s extra thick and chunky and means that you can have the whole series on your shelves together. THE DREAM.